First Commissioning Results Of The Multicusp Ion Source At Mit (Mist-1) For H-2(+)

IsoDAR is an experiment under development to search for sterile neutrinos using the isotope Decay-At-Rest (DAR) production mechanism, where protons impinging on Be-9 create neutrons which capture on Li-7 which then beta-decays producing (nu) over bar (e). As this will be an isotropic source of (nu) over bar (e), the primary driver current must be large (10 mA cw) for IsoDAR to have sufficient statistics to be conclusive within 5 years of running. H-2(+) was chosen as primary ion to overcome some of the space-charge limitations during low energy beam transport and injection into a compact cyclotron. The H-2(+) will be stripped into protons before the target. At MIT, a multicusp ion source (MIST-1) was designed and built to produce a high intensity beam with a high H-2(+) fraction. MIST-1 is now operational at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) at MIT and under commissioning.